Volume 01: Production and resources of the northern and western districts of New South Wales, 1854 [ca. 1850-1857] - Page 546

at indications of a similar character exist in the District of Liverpool these are to be seen the plains of that district which are situated to the westward of the great northern Cordillera, Similar I [?] [?]marks to those I refer to in the Treat Bulga Sea Wall have recently been observed at the Cap of Good Hope and reference may also be made to the parallel lines observed at Glenroy in Scotland.
INDICATIONS OF THE RETIRING OF THE OCEAN IN DISTRICTS SITUATED TO THE WESTWARD OF THE GREAT CORDILLERA.

The Revd. W.B.Clarke writing on the geological structure of the western slopes of the highlands of New England between the summits of the Cordillera & the interior in the basins of the Gwyder and Macintyre rivers states "Thus rocks, of igneous origin, form the furthest bulwarks of the mountain region against the intrusion of the winds which once blew over a waste of waters, but now range across a level region of alluvia supplied by the  hills to the eastward.  It is impossible to avoid convection, that at one period the level interior must have been so occupied by waters.  Seen from any of the points in advance to the westward, the perfect level of the horizon, high up, as is the Ocean seen from a cliff, with the undulations of refractions in the
atmosphere along the tops of the trees, just as waters are seen under similar influences, & with the estuary and bay like forms of the flat land coming up to the bases and between the spurs of the hills, it requires but little immagination [imagination] to fill up again the bays and open spaces with water, and to imagine such solitary hills as Bareena, in advance of the headland, as an island, since it is yet seperated [separated] by the channel of the Gwyder [Gwydir] from the range to which it belongs, and stands, in the midst of the plain, as many an island on the shores of the present sea.  It is to the influence of forces, which belongs to the province of geology, to describe and apply that that has changed the face of nature from what we conclude it once was, to what we behold it now; & viewed by the light which geology casts upon these mysterious works of nature, and looking forward to the progress of events which have already covered large tracks of this reclaimed bed of Ocean, with flocks and herds and the habitations of civilised man, it is equally impossible to check the conviction, that before another century this vast region which was so difficult of access to its first explorer in 1832, may, by the aid of the iron in Australian hills, or the woods that clothe them, be traversed with ease from on coast to the other, & see even treasures, burried [buried] by alluvial floods below the soil disentombed for the benefit of posterity:
 
INDICATIONS OF THE RETIRING OF THE OCEAN IN LOWER DARLING DISTRICT
Indications of the retiring of the Ocean has been observed by travellers in Lower Darling district on their passing in a westerly direction down the plains of the Lachlan & Murrumbidgee rivers, they have been enabled to trace by sufficient evidence the retiring of the Ocean for three or four hundred miles. In Australia we have evidence to demonstrate that the waters of the Deluge [?] withdrawn from the South. The evident [evidence?]  of water being from the north to south.
 
INDICATIONS OF THE RETIRING OF THE OCEAN IN THE COLONY OF VICTORIA
A numerous collection of Fossil shells have recently been gathered from the banks of the Glenelg river about  two miles above Dartmoor
& about fifty miles in the interior in a north West direction from the Sea port at Portland. The shells are those of salt water fish, Such as the oyster, scallop, Muscle [mussel], Cockle & & many of these specimens are remarkably perfect in their preservation.  These were found in the limestone formation & prove that the Ocean has at one period covered that part of the Colony where they were found. The fossils are of those species of salt water fish still in existence & not of an extinct species.
During the year 1844 on the occasion of digging a well near to Mount Macedon a Vast number of bones were found embedded in a thin stratum of gravel about two feet below the surface in a swampy flat surrounded by gently rising grounds. These bones have been examined & ascertained to be chiefly the remains of two very large species of Kangaroo Macropus Titan & M Atlas together with those of a large & extrordinary [extraordinary] animal also extinct, to which the name of Diprotodon ( double toothed) was given
from a fragment of a tooth found in Wellington district in a Cave near Bathurst New South Wales. In the [?] of Mount Macedon a prodigious accumulation of those interesting remains of past ages appears in the gravel pits